Isaiah 1:29 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For they shall be ashamed He does not speak of an ingenuous and penitential shame for sin, but of an involuntary and penal shame for the disappointment of the hopes which they had placed in their idols; of the oaks which ye have desired Which, after the manner of the heathen, you have consecrated to idolatrous uses. Of what particular kind the trees here mentioned were, cannot be determined with certainty. The Hebrew word אלה, here used, is rendered ilex by Bishop Lowth, which properly means the scarlet oak. Others think the terebinth-tree was intended. And ye shall be confounded for the gardens, &c. In which, as well as in the groves, they practised idolatry: see Isaiah 65:3; and Isaiah 66:17. “Sacred groves,” the reader will observe, “were a very ancient and favourite appendage of idolatry. They were furnished with the temple of the god to whom they were dedicated; with altars, images, and every thing necessary for performing the various rites of worship offered there; and were the scenes of many impure ceremonies, and of much abominable superstition. They made a principal part of the religion of the old inhabitants of Canaan; and the Israelites were commanded to destroy their groves, among other monuments of their false worship. The Israelites themselves, however, became afterward very much addicted to this species of idolatry:” see Ezekiel 20:28; Hosea 4:13. Bishop Lowth.